At the word "underwear," we lost it. We were gone. Pink-faced, curled up on the floor in stomach-hurting laughter, tears streaming down our cheeks.

Underwear!

Reading the word in print was literally too much for us bear. Too hysterical. And there was a picture of it, too!

And that, in a nutshell, is the brilliance of Theodor Seuss Geisel, aka Dr. Seuss.

Geisel knew how to write for kids in a way that made them want to read. No sterile "See Dick run. See Jane go."

Seuss gave us the Lorax, the Whos, the Grinch and the Cat in the Hat. He gave us whimsical characters and colorful worlds — and words like "underwear."

Geisel understood that if kids are bored with a book, they're not going to read it. Period. Likewise, if they're intrigued by it, they will.

Geisel would've turned 109 on March 2. For the past 16 years, the National Education Association has celebrated his birthday with "Read Across America Day," on which they urge teachers and parents to celebrate Dr. Seuss — and reading in general — by reading one of his books to a child.

Each year, thousands of schools, libraries, and community centers around the nation participate in Read Across America Day. Because March 2 falls on a Saturday this year, the 16th annual Read Across America Day will be celebrated March 1; this year's theme is: "Grab your Hat and Read with the Cat."

Teachers, you can print out certificates of participation for your pupils at www.seussville.com/special/read.html. You can also join "Read Across America" on Facebook or post your videos to SchoolTube to learn what other educators are planning.

By the way, Seussville.com is one of the coolest lit Web sites for kids I've ever seen. If I was a little kid today, I'd spend hours on it.

Theodor Seuss Geisel was a fascinating guy — just as much of a character as you'd expect him to be.

Born in 1904, in nearby Springfield, to German immigrants Theodor Robert and Henrietta Seuss Geisel, young Geisel grew up happy and financially well-off. His father and grandfather were successful brewmasters.

He attended Dartmouth College and "by all accounts was a typical, mischievous college student," according to his Web site.

He became the editor-in-chief of "Jack-O-Lantern," Dartmouth's humor magazine — but his job came to an abrupt end when he and his friends were "caught throwing a party that did not coincide with school policy."

So Geisel continued to contribute to Jack-O, using the pen name "Seuss."

Upon graduating from Dartmouth, Geisel told his dad he won a fellowship to Oxford University and the elder Geisel had it published in the Springfield newspaper — only the young man had lied. Embarrassed, his dad scraped together funds to send him anyway.

So young Ted left for Oxford intending to become a professor.

Sitting in an Oxford classroom one day, his doodling caught the eye of a fellow American student Helen Palmer. She suggested he become an artist instead of a professor, and he took her advice — and eventually, her hand in marriage, according to his Web site.

Back stateside after college, Geisel started out as a cartoonist for Judge, a New York weekly; many of the characters from his Judge sketches resemble the characters of his books. He then spent 15 years drawing ads for Standard Oil.

At Palmer's urging, he wrote a children's book, "And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street" — only to see it rejected 27 times. Finally an old friend from Dartmouth who worked at Houghton Mifflin offered to show the manuscript there, and it was published in 1937.

It was another 20 years before Geisel became a legend.

Houghton Mifflin and Random House teamed up and asked Geisel to write a children's primer using 220 new-reader vocabulary words — and the result was "The Cat in the Hat" (1957). While schools were hesitant to use it, kids and their parents loved it.

Dr. Seuss as we know him was born.

During his lifetime "Dr. Seuss" was honored with numerous degrees, three Academy Awards, and a Pulitzer.

Geisel died in 1991. Today, there are some 300 million copies of his 47 children's books translated into 15 different languages.

"The Cat in the Hat," "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," "Horton Hears a Who" and most recently "The Lorax," have all been made into Hollywood movies.

Almost every school and library is doing something Seuss-related this week, so check with your local library or child's school to see what's going on.

WORD Inc. Child Development Center will host "Seussical the Musical" at 7 p.m. March 2 and 2 p.m. March 3 at Kuss Middle School in Fall River. Tickets are $15 for adults and $10 for children 12 and under, military and senior citizens. For tickets, call (508) 673.4421 or e-mail talkREADplay@wordkids.net.

Of course, you can always just pick up a Dr. Seuss book and read to your kids. Some of my favorites:

"The Lorax," (1971). My absolute favorite.

"McElligot's Pool," (1947). I used to read it to my Cabbage Patch Dolls.

"Hop on Pop," (1963). Another one I used to think was absolutely hilarious.

While the world knew Dr. Seuss, Geisel himself remained a reclusive enigma. In this biography, his close friends, the Morgans, give us their firsthand insights as well as excerpts from his voluminous papers. The result is an intimate portrait of a dreamer who saw the world "through the wrong end of a telescope."

Surely, Geisel was some kind of genius. I'll leave you with a few quotes:

"Sometimes the questions are complicated and the answers are simple."

"Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better. It's not."